The headphone bug bit me hard about 6 months ago. Grado SR60's, Sennheiser HD650's, AKG 701's, and a few amps later, I think I've got it under control now...

My work rig now consists of Sennheiser HD650's powered by one of the new Little Dot MKII's, linked via a DLO Audio dock. When it comes to raw and emotional 2-channel musical enjoyment, I almost prefer it to my home system. Yeah, really. It's that good.

I love the glowing happy lushness of the LD's tubes so much it's my new avatar.

Are you using any amplification with the HD650's? They're such high impedience cans that they really need it. You will not believe what they sound like when properly amped.

David, the guy on eBay who imports/sells them, seems to be a truly good guy. I was a little bit hesitant about buying the LD, considering it ships from China. You never quite know how that's going to work. But David's feedback and his presence over on HeadFi convinced me to give it a shot. I was blown away at how fast it shipped. Auction won & paid on January 24th, and the amp was sitting on my front porch on January 30th. Great communication with David the whole time. Zero problems, just as it should be.

My attitude towards headphones and how they can sound completely changed with this setup. It's hard to describe the changes without using the standard clichés. It's brought a tremendous amount of sensuality and depth to my music. Performances feel more organic, more alive, more.... real than ever before. Of course, I still love my Axioms and greatly enjoy listening to music on them at home, and there's a certain depth and spaciousness that headphones can't really reproduce. But there's an intimacy and warmth with this headphone setup that my home system just doesn't have. IMHO, it's incredible.

Originally Posted By: St_PatGuy

That's good news, Peter. I've been eyeballing those Little Dot amps on eBay ever since Adam posted about it a while back. I've got the HD650s, too.

I just don't do that much headphone listening and haven't been able to justify the expense. Things may change.

I don't have a headphone amp for them, no. I do, however, have a tube preamp that has a pretty robust headphone section. With the high impedence Senns I can definitely hear a difference between my HK receiver (had to crank the volume way up) and the tube preamp (doesn't require so much extra juice to make the Senns sound good). The preamp is on the other side of my room and I've been looking for a separate headphone amp for my computer desk.

I'd be a little wary of overseas shipments, too. But, like you said, and have confirmed, David has excellent feedback and doesn't seem hard to contact.

I'm really new to headphone amplification, but from what I've read (over on HeadFi), the headphone outputs on things like receivers and DVD players that plug into the wall are usually pretty good. At least compared to using just an MP3 player's headphone jack, for instance. I have no idea if it would be better or worse than a specific piece of equipment. I know that there's a huge improvement in quality and quantity over the output from my iPod directly.

The LD does get pretty warm. I usually leave it on for 2-3 hours at a time, maybe 3 or 4 days a week at my office. Within about an hour, it's at the max temp. I would imagine that the tubes are about as hot as an incandescent light bulb at that point. No touching. The chassis itself is quite warm too, but not past the point where I feel discomfort in handling it. In other words, warm enough to be quite warm but not hot enough that there's a time limit on how long you can touch it. It's close though.

Eh, children's college funds are overrated. Make em take out their own loans. And no, I don't have any kids yet.